JUST LIKE EDDIE!

You know you’ve made it when they turn you into a small plastic figure

Born Edward Constantinowsky on 29 October 1917, in Los Angeles, to Russian immigrant parents. Eddie Constantine’s father was an operatic baratone and Eddie studied voice in Vienna, but his career as a singer in the US was unsuccessful. He married dancer Helene Mussel, and when she joined the Ballets de Monte Carlo they both moved to Paris, where Eddie began singing in nightclubs. Discovered by Edith Piaf, he became her protégé and close friend, and she helped him launch a career as a popular recording artist.

His film career began in 1953, when he first took the role of tough American private eye Lemmy Caution, in a series of French action thrillers based on the novels of Peter Cheyney. In 1965 Jean-Luc Godard appropriated both Constantine and Caution for Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution, a futuristic, parodic homage to the detective film genre. Constantine starred in movies of other genres, but usually in his basic tough-guy, heroic acting style. Filmmakers of the New German Cinema resurrected Constantine and his persona; notably, Rainer Werner Fassbinder cast him as the laconic star of the film-within-the-film in Warnung vor einer heiligen Nutte (1971). Constantine also appeared in a number of German TV dramas in the 70s and 80s and, late in life, re-visited his most famous role in Godard’s Allemagne année 90 neuf zéro (1991).

He is also the author of Le Proprietaire (published in English as The Godplayer) and Votre dévoué Blake.